Quarantine Tank Advice

[pgsonier]

Would you guys recommend that I get a quarantine tank? I was thinking about getting the Waterbox Cube 10gal as a quarantine tank to accompany my Waterbox Peninsula 25gal, but I'm not sure if I need one or not. I plan on turning my WBP25 into a reef. What goes into keeping a quarantine tank? Any and all advice is much appreciated!

Photo for attention and a bit of a chuckle if you've ever watched this movie and remember this scene lol.

 

[MaxxuM]

A QT is always a good idea! I wouldn't spend much on it though. You can usually get a 10g with an OK filter all for less than $30. And a bottle of bacteria and Prime are a good idea too.

 

[pgsonier]

A QT is always a good idea! I wouldn't spend much on it though. You can usually get a 10g with an OK filter all for less than $30. And a bottle of bacteria and Prime are a good idea too.

If I'm going to be putting corals in this tank as well, do I need to get a great light, or can I get by two weeks with just a cheap light setup? As for the filter, is a hang on the back filter okay? Do you put substrate in a QT?

 

[MaxxuM]

That's a little more tricky. It depends. I use a Kessil A150W usually. It's neither great nor bad. Enough for most corals IME. I don't do much SPS, but I'd imagine you'd also want to have good flow and at least OK'ish lights but nothing extremely powerful. I know people use the black boxes and other Amazon lights for their QT tanks, but you got to watch the power on those things.

 

[Reef.]

I have a 14g tank, no qt, if you don’t run a qt well it can do more harm than good, if you find a good LFS that maybe quarantines their fish or you trust then that could be an option too.
There is a lot of people that do not use a qt, someone on here has a tank for 40+ years with no qt, if you don’t run it well you could kill the fish rather than save them.

My advice, if you are not sure what you are doing and do not put 100% effort into the qt I wouldn’t risk it.

 

[Oropher]

If I'm going to be putting corals in this tank as well, do I need to get a great light, or can I get by two weeks with just a cheap light setup? As for the filter, is a hang on the back filter okay? Do you put substrate in a QT?

I thought you meant a fish QT, and it turned out that you would want a coral QT.
Quarantining coral is mainly to prevent investation. And we would want to inspect whether there are some parasite "eggs" that would hatch and become nightmare in the DT. This discipline would take longer than 2 weeks; and keeping parameter in check for the whole quarantining process in such a small tank is quite difficult. IMO, coral QT needs a mature system, unlike fish QT.

 

[MaxxuM]

...keeping parameter in check for the whole quarantining process in such a small tank is quite difficult. IMO...

Not really. Just use your main tank media and water. I do small water changes at the same time on both... Main goes into QT goes down the drain. I've always been told to keep extra biological media in your main for emergencies too. You can have a hospital/QT tank up and running in less than an hour.